


On Hallowed Ground We Made a Life

by GentleStorm



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, BAMF Credence Barebone, BAMF Newt Scamander, BAMF Theseus Scamander, Credence Barebone Deserves Better, Credence is not a plot device, Don't mess with Credence, F/M, Hurt Original Percival Graves, In that he's an idiot, Leta Lestrange is not a plot device, M/M, Multi, Nagini is not a plot device, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The ministry is a bunch of morons, This story is how his nose gets broken, We're all angry here about how JK Rowling treats characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-30 05:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20441162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GentleStorm/pseuds/GentleStorm
Summary: It feels wrong to step onto school ground with the intent to fuck with Albus Dumbledore, not that Theseus says so. He bites his tongue, clenches his wand and says nothing. It feels like he’s walking on hallowed, forgotten ground as they stroll through halls where they learned how to let magic hold them up, make them strong.“When he rallies, do not go. It’s what he wants,” Dumbledore will tell him, like Theseus doesn’t have a fucking brain cell left, which fine. Maybe he doesn’t. The fact that he’s here, having this banal conversation is evidence enough of that.He knows Newt’s in France, because of course that’s where his brother would go the second he knew Credence is alive. He knows that. Albus has kind eyes, eyes that would pierce through him when he was a kid, sitting there, learning transfiguration tricks and charms. He remembered carving his initials into desks, following Newt into the kitchen for midnight snacks, but he wasn’t buried under the weight of the past like Leta.





	On Hallowed Ground We Made a Life

It feels wrong to step onto school ground with the intent to fuck with Albus Dumbledore, not that Theseus says so. He bites his tongue, clenches his wand and says nothing. It feels like he’s walking on hallowed, forgotten ground as they stroll through halls where they learned how to let magic hold them up, make them strong.

“When he rallies, do not go. It’s what he wants,” Dumbledore will tell him, like Theseus doesn’t have a fucking brain cell left, which fine. Maybe he doesn’t. The fact that he’s here, having this banal conversation is evidence enough of that.

He knows Newt’s in France, because of course that’s where his brother would go the second he knew Credence is alive. He knows that. Albus has kind eyes, eyes that would pierce through him when he was a kid, sitting there, learning transfiguration tricks and charms. He remembered carving his initials into desks, following Newt into the kitchen for midnight snacks, but he wasn’t buried under the weight of the past like Leta.

He remembers Newt sneaking various killer creatures into the kitchen, and befriending loaner house elves. If there’s one thing he knows in this world is his brother’s desire to help the helpless. He’s desperately trying to not remember who taught him that.

He’s also trying desperately to remember that they’re not at war, even though it sure as hell feels like one.

Leta and he didn’t start dating until long after school, long after what had happened between her and Newt had fizzled out, at least on her end. But then he’s always had a complicated history with Newt.

They hadn’t meant to hurt each other, but they were children then, and children often hurt each other in the largest ways by the smallest of actions. Leta hadn’t meant to sink her fears of the world into Newt, hadn’t meant to steal away his brightness with her ghosts. And Newt? He hadn’t meant to ask Leta to be his protector when he knew she couldn't protect herself.

They were children then, only about five years ago, and they still feel like children cast into a war that they didn’t ask for but came anyway.

“When’s the funeral going to be?” Tina asks Newt when they think he can’t hear. Theseus has a thousand or so charms on his ears that say otherwise.

There isn’t a war on, he reminds himself as they schedule first and second watches, and he lies in his bed doing his best to pretend he’s sleeping.

“Two weeks. They-well, there’s just her cousins who are coming into town.” Theseus has been staying in Newt’s spare bedroom in the case, getting cared for, and feeling like an out of sorts bowtruckle that Newt doesn’t quite know what to do with.

Newt doesn’t press in, doesn’t know how to ask if Theseus is okay, because well . . . he’s the older one. He’s always had to be okay for Newt. He’s always had to have the answer, and now? He doesn’t know. It has both of them wrongfooted, and that’s not even getting into the whole bit about his fiance dying in front of two men who loved her.

“Lumos,” Tina mutters, casting a distracted lumos charm to brighten up the room. “You hear anything from Credence?”

“No.” 

“You listening in again?” Jacob asks, nudging Theseus away from the staircase. “Come on, there’s no point in that. Let’s get some sausages.” If he could feel anything besides pain and sorrow, he’d muster up some thankfulness for whoever raised Jacob to care about food.

They met at an event, Leta and he. Leta had gone into law, working at a firm that directly opposed the Ministry a lot. She was used to pushing against things, finding the hidden clues. She was more than aware that she was working at being redeemable. She wasn’t, redeemable that is.

Newt couldn't ever not love a monster, and it wasn’t enough then, and is certainly isn’t enough when she’s slucking around the ministry with armfulls of case biefs.

Theseus didn’t fall for her because he thought she was without flaws.

She spilled a drink all down his front, because he said rude things about what should be done about the giants in the north. It would be a minute before she learned how much of an arse he could be without Newt to remind him to be a little kinder.

She was currently working a case on troll relations with the government because they didn’t care who she is. They didn’t care that she now knows how to make her hair lay flat and frame her face. They cared more about her ability to chug a beer (which she learned from a gal from Upswitch) than about her appearance or her past.

Leta spills her drink all over the fancy looking Auror, because they have a tendency to make her job a lot harder than it has to be, and she remembers Newt’s snarling about fair and equitable treatment of all creatures, magical and non-magical.

The berk laughs it off.

Theseus laughs because she’s beautiful and unapologetic about spilling the drink, throwing it, really, and he can’t help but be enchanted by that. So, he laughs as he mops up his front with a few spells, and then asks her out to dinner, to “Give me the chance to apologize for my appalling behavior.”

“You won’t want that, I’m Leta Lestrange.” She doesn’t bow before the expectation of him renouncing even talking to her.

“And I’m Theseus Scamander.” He grins. “I would pay. Come on, free food, and to get away from all this.” He waves a hand at the fussy party that he got dragged to by a colleague.

“Yes.”

“Confession is good for the soul, or so I’m told,” Dumbledore will tell her. It shouldn’t mean much that he doesn’t find her worthless, or unredeemable or a hideous, black mark on his history of teaching.

She’s out of school, out of what felt like hell every day, brightened only by Newt, for how long that lasted. She wears clicky, courtroom heels, and bright colors because she’s done being shamed by others. She has Theseus now, who’s spent years soothing scars that have already faded from time and her own effort.

But once a hat promised her grandeur and true friends, and like a sucker, she bought it because she’d been a child.

Dumbledore has lines now, creasing across his face that weren’t there only a few years ago. He’s lost sleep and weight. He still looks jovial, still has that twinkle in his eye, but like the muggles who grow out of believing in Santa, he looks more human than he did before to her eyes.

“Was I your worst student?”

“You weren’t dumb.”

“I didn’t ask that.”

She wants to take the hat down and have a little talk with it about promising children impossible things. 

She wants to kick off her shoes and slide down banisters that she’d always wanted to.

“Leta, I want to spend the rest of our lives together. Will you marry me?” Theseus asks on a bright sunny day, because she hates the rain, hates how it settles into her bones.

“Yes,” she’ll say because she loves him, loves everything about him. He makes her believe in love, in friendship. But she’ll never believe that she deserves redemption.

She talks to Newt still, kinda has to, since she’s marrying his brother.

“Picket still a racket?” she’ll ask, knowing better than to fake small talk about the weather.

“Hmm.” He doesn’t look at her. He’s kinda like the sun when he’s like this, painful to look at, painful to take in because he’s so bright. She mourns any darkness in him that she had a hand in. “Still fighting against hippogriffs being owned by every Tom, Dick, and Harry?”

“Damn right.” He smiles and maybe they’re not a loss cause. As much as they feel like children, they’re not. They’ve had time to grow, and let old wounds fade. “See Tina recently?” she asks. “Theseus is always on about how you can’t settle down.”

“Yes, well. It takes dragons forty years to pick a mate. I’ve got time.”

“That’s not true about dragons.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know that.” They grin more widely at each other.

Leta will walk towards Grindelwald, because she’s won court cases for muggleborns, won them for magical creatures who would be oppressed under his rule, won them because there are things that she can’t change, and this is one she can. She walks down those hard, high, marble steps because she killed her brother, and she’s sick of running away.

They make first years go across the lake by boat, through gentle waves, usually under a full moon if the headmaster does their timing right. She doesn’t remember breathing the whole way across. Her hands were white across her wand.

It feels like that, walking down those steps, because she’s doing something she doesn’t hope to survive, and she’s going to be all right with that. She feels all right with that, because her loves are out of range, and they’ve given her more than enough for her to give them time to run.

She has Theseus’ love wrapped around her like a worn in cloak, and she firmly ignores his panicked face. “Run.” She doesn’t count on Theseus to run so she looks at Newt, placing her heart once more in his hands, and then she looks no more.

“I’m their best man, which is more of a joke really,” Newt said to Tina because well, that’s the truth. He’s always been a bit of a joke. It just . . . it hurts a little bit how thoroughly Leta rejected him for Theseus, but that was before she died, before he watched Theseus crack in two.

He’s used to being the odd brother, the out of place, and displaced. He’s so well-used to that opinion of him that it doesn’t register even more, but Leta. Leta was always something different. And he knows she never meant to hurt him.

He makes cup upon cup of tea for Theseus and stares at him until his brother drinks each cup. They have maps of Europe spread across the table with tacks pinned up everywhere, markers where they think Grindelwald is going next, where he’s recruiting from, where Credence might be.

They find Percy in Prague. It’s cold and damp, and Theseus nearly loses it from thinking how much Leta would be quietly bitching about the conditions. Percy has had most of his arm torn off and they can see bone where his hands should be, flesh stripped away, but he’s alive.

They’re still alive.

Newt carefully wraps him up and hustles him down into the case. Theseus parks himself on a low stool next to the cot, and gets Percy to choke down thick potions that keep him out of it while Newt and Tina scramble, trying to find something to heal what’s left of his hands.

“What can I do to help get the sonofabitch?” he asks, almost immediately from waking. Well, Theseus thinks, they all might be going to the looney bin after this, but at least they’re all committed.

It feels a little like they’re walking dead rather than walking wounded. Theseus is doing his best to not recall the war, the fire campsites, writing letters to Leta. They weren’t dating yet, barely even thought of it at that point.

As the weeks go by, the wizarding world slowly realizes that people are being killed, folks aren’t coming home ever again. And the ministry begins to lose its shit. The gang end up in northern Europe, chasing down leads.

“Here,” Newt says, thrusting a locket at his brother.

“What’s this?” They’re resting in the forests of Germany, since Newt has a friend nice enough to house them for a night.

“There was a charm witch in the market. Well, it’s supposed to alert you to danger.”

Theseus clicks it open. There’s a picture of Leta, smiling up at him. She has ink on her face and a smile around her eyes, but not her mouth. Leta doesn’t-didn’t smile with her mouth. Theseus licks his lips, reminds himself that Englishmen don’t cry, and says, “Thanks, Newt.”

Not too far away, Nagini looks out at the hills. She feels thin and tired. Credence keeps offering to heal her wounds, but she wants, needs, the pain to ground her in this body. All things die. All things suffer.

All things end.

Grindelwald feels like much more of a reptile than she ever has. He smiles at Credence, praising the boy, and ignoring her. But she remembers being pinned into a wall, and how eyes in crowds would stare at her without remorse or guilt. His eyes look like that.

“Are you sure?” she asks Credence, just once. He nods. She wants to shake apart and draw herself around him, but she can’t. She knows that. But he’s so desperate for family, so hellbent on finding some that he’ll run to the ends of the earth.

And well. She’s tied herself to more terrible causes than this boy.

Credence found her, broke her away, and even though he’s gaining confidence, he’s still a boy, set adrift in the world.

“You’re cursed,” her nan told her. “But that’s all right. There’s lots in this world that’s cursed, but that doesn’t mean you have to act it.”

One day she’ll turn into a snake and not turn back, but that’s okay. She’s known that all her life and she’s done crying about it. Everything dies. Everything has to come to an end. But not here. Not now.

“I’m leaving,” Credence says one day, sick of being told who he has to be. Her things, food mainly, are already packed. He apparates them to a lake in southern France. Grindelwald tries to stop them.

She loses three fingers to his curses and Credence cries all night, and maybe she will too, but everything ends. Everything dies. And it does her much more good thinking that than wallowing, than forcing him to wallow.

And one day a man will walk into her forest, asking for a friend. One day, when she’s very very old and tired, ready to give up the fight, a brave young man will cut off her head. She has this told to her in southern France, when it’s raining and Credence is waiting on the stoop for her, because he doesn’t want to know her fortune.

The woman who told her is young, so young, maybe fourteen. She has steel grey hair and didn’t blink at her bloody hand. It feels enough, to be seen by her, to be loved for a moment by a stranger.

But that’s not for Credence.

He’s more than a little bit tired of being told who he’s supposed to be.

She knew what she had to be when she was four years old and her nan told her blunt and simple that she’s a monster.

Well. Everything has to end. But what you do between that time and now is the most important thing.

So. She bundles Credence up, even though he has mucus on his face, and hustles them off to find an Englishman with a case. She didn’t expect him to be this kind.

“I’m sorry,” she gets told by the Englishman. She’s not particularly soothed by his apology.

“Why?”

“Your bloodcurse. I’m sorry.” 

“Are you the one who cursed me?”

“No?” he asks, like she’s about to trick him.

“Then don’t apologize, wizard. To become something else is not necessarily a curse if I don’t chose to believe it as such.” It’s a brave front, she’ll only admit to herself. But it’s not a lie.

She spends most of her time between Jacob and Credence. Maybe she’s drawn to outcasts, she thinks warily. Jacob doesn’t look at her like she’s a lost cause or with as much kindness as Newt, not that Newt is malicious with his kindness. But well. Those who are forsworn rarely like to have it brought up in their faces.

“So, are you going to find her? Your lover?” she asks, because well, she’s tired of others walking soft around her, and it’s easy to see the same in Jacob. They are both unable to use magic in the way that the world would want them to. It does not make them lesser.

“Yeah. She just. She made a mistake. She’ll come round. I can’t imagine that Grindelwald's head is easy to be around.”

He teaches her how to make pastry in Newt’s case. And they all feel a little broken, a little worn in, but they feel better than living in captivity at the circus.

They hold the funeral on a bright, Sunday afternoon. Theseus hasn’t cried yet. He’s just- he wants to. He wants to weep, but then he’ll never stop. Fuck. And there’s Newt standing on his right, so he’s not going to start weeping now.

None of them say a word. All of the others bow their heads as Theseus transfigures boulder into a raven in the sunlit grove. It was on the Scamander estate. It was where they would have picnics and had fallen in love. It’s where he would have married her under the boughs of this great British oak tree.

He shuts his eyes from the memories of lazing under this tree, laughing at her jokes and kissing her tenderly.

So he doesn’t cry, just rubs at his dry eyes. Newt’s crying softly, leaning on Tina. He hadn’t really met her, but that she has a steady arm tucked around his brother and the way she cast hexes at Grindelwald makes him think she’ll fit right in.

Percy touches his shoulder gently as Theseus passes him.

Credence keeps to himself. He doesn’t . . . he knows he’s an interloper. The group easily accepts Nagini because of Jacob and Newt. But him? He knew better and he still fell for Grindelwald’s tricks.

“It’s okay, you know,” Percy says out of nowhere. It’s been a few hours since the funeral. They’re sitting on the top of some abandoned building that some iffy friend of Newt had set them up with.

“What?” Credence has to ask.

Percy grins. “This. Us. It’s okay to want a family.”

“Is it? Because every family thus far has tried to kill me or use me for their own agenda. Maybe it’s better to be alone.”

“So why are you here?”

“He kept staring at Nagini, like she was a thing, like she was lesser when he thought I couldn't see him.” Credence smiles. It’s not a nice one. “He forgot that I used to be smoke. Still can be sometimes,” he allows.

“I just-” Percy sighs. “I’ve spent a long time alone, stuck in that hovel because I didn’t have anybody who missed me.”

“Hmm.”

“Come on. Let’s make sure you can defend yourself.”

Percy teaches protego and reparo first, tries to pass if off like he hasn’t been thinking about it for a week and a half. That weak as he is, he lets Credence cast them on him because here is a man who got so used to be broken, being irreparable, and Percy. Well, Percy is tired of watching people hurt.

Newt doesn’t ask him about the days he spent locked up in Grindelwald’s cellar. Newt knows far too much about what it means to be asked to say things that should’ve died long ago. Tina knows far too much about not asking the right questions to stop asking. Period.

“What happened there?” she’ll ask, running a finger along a healing wound.

Sometimes he jerks away, the wound and memory still too painful to pry open and let drain. Other times, he’ll whisper back, not meeting either Newt’s nor her eyes.

Tina grew up in Ilvermorny. Well, that’s what Dumbledore, and all adults who think that children aren’t fighting their own daily wars, would’ve liked. They would’ve liked to think that she grew up in polished classrooms and only learning certain things at certain times.

The truth of the matter is she grew in American alleyways, trying to earn a dime. She has faint, very faint now, scars from the factory jobs she would work when school let out. She has an angry scar behind her left ear from being hit with a glass bottle because she didn’t fetch something quick enough.

She sunk her bones into the law that did not fight for her, did not listen to her, did not protect children. She sunk her bones into being better, and well, she was a Pukwudgie so she’s always had the urge to heal at the tips of her fingers.

So she wants Percy to let it all out, letting Newt wash the now healing wounds.

Percy does his absolute best to not fall in love with them in return.

So, he teaches protego and reparo and tries his best to not think of Tina and Newt’s patience.

Credence takes sharply to magic, like it’s a fight. He knocks Percy off his feet in the third attempt. Percy pulls himself up, barking out “Again!”

The war or something like it, carries on.

But it comes to an end eventually, as all things do.

Credence doesn’t talk about it. They all spread out, flung across the corners of the Earth, doing their best to ignore what they’ve been through. Queenie lives in a cottage in Wales, moving every time Jacob manages to track down her address.

Credence does his best to keep out of it. He starts living in Newt’s suitcase again, not having anywhere else to go. Nagini decided to live in the forest, and he’s not coping with that well enough for Tina. Newt had stuttered and somehow they decided to travel a little while Tina sorts things out with Congress.

But they’re not fucking talking and Credence is sick and grateful of it.

They end up in Africa. It’s as far as Newt can get from Percy, Credence notes. Percy’s more practical than Newt. Whatever it is that’s going on, and Credence knows he doesn’t know most of it, the negative impacts are mostly on Newt’s inability to accept Percy’s love.

And maybe it comes from having Tina as an aunt, but Credence believes they should give up the ghost of society’s expectations and be happy together.

“And this here is a Jabber Snake,” Newt exclaims excitedly. Credence eyes him. All right. That’s far enough, buddy.

He waits until Newt’s done with the newest pet before touching his shoulder, suitcase in hand, and appartating them to the Brooklyn Harbor. Newt stumbles, blinking. Credence doesn’t know if he knew that Credence can apparate. Credence doesn’t carry a wand, doesn’t really need to.

“We are sitting down in this pub, here, and talking about it,” Credence says peaceable, not taking any argument from Newt, and steering him into a gay bar.

“This-this”

“Yep. You’re gay. Or queer, although Jacob told me that’s a slur, but some folks like it and use it.”

“I know that!” Newt snaps, finally meeting Credence’s eyes. He raises an eyebrow in return.

“Then what’s the trouble?”

“I-What if they hurt me? Or leave me?”

“Tina loves you. She’s in love with you, and Percy-” Here, Newt coughs and chokes, but Credence ignores him, “is head over heels for you, you utter idiot.”

“So what? I could hurt them.”

Credence stares at him, and searches for the barkeep. He orders and drowns a whole beer before he works up his courage to deal with Newt’s self-esteem issues. At no fucking point in his life would he think that he would be the one to offer sound relationship advice. He’s more than a little taken aback that the kid from the orphanage is the sane one.

Although, low bar with Dumbledore.

“So what? We just fought a war. There could be another one tomorrow. Why are you so worried about hurting them?”

“Because . . . because I hurt Leta and Theseus, and I don’t- what if I hurt them?”

“Then they get hurt. And you guys figure it out. There’s this new thing called “talking” instead of fucking off to Africa.”

Credence waits him out, gets him drunk enough that he babbles, and pours the Brit into the suitcase cot. He leaves the suitcase at Tina’s flat.

______________________________________________  
She’s beautiful. Credence does his best to keep his eyes on the coins that he hands over for what has to be the 8th loaf of bread he’s bought this week. The woman snorts, but gives him the correct change back.

“Aren’t you gonna ask him out?” the woman’s friend says.

Credence feels his face turn bright red.

“Jill, I swear to Christ, you would try a priest,” Credence does his best to not hear that whisper, but well, they’re three feet apart.

“Do you, do you want to get a drink sometime?” he asks, wanting to spare her from the misery of well-meaning friends. She blinks at him and he smiles back.

“Yeah. Sure. I get off at 8.”

“Cool. I’ll pick you up then. My name’s Credence.”

“I’m Rose.”

She wears her plain brown dress, not knowing what to wear particularly. Sarah teases her about her hair and Dutch braids it for her.

Credence holds doors, pulls chairs out for her, and foots the bill.

It’s a perfectly delightful date up until she asks him what his childhood was like. The bright man in front of her dulls just a bit. She bites her lip to keep from apologizing, and leans in instead. Life isn’t kind. People can be. These are not things to flinch from.

“I was raised in an orphanage. Jacob found me and took me in as a baker assistant.” His voice changes in the second sentence, gets lighter.

Rose is a little taken aback. She misjudged him. She thought him to be a nice, soft boy, who came from a good family, who’s never faced a day of hardship in his life.

“I lost my husband to the first war,” Rose says slowly, belaying all the work it took to say that sentence. “I am not ready for another one.”

“I am not ready to settle down and have eighteen children,” Credence says. “I’m not sure if I want children. I just . . . “ He sighs. “I don’t like eating alone.”

It’s the start of something.

___________________________  
They go out for dinner three more times. Credence is careful with Rose, in a way that she hasn’t been treated in a long time. It takes him a while to invite her back to his flat. It’s covered in sketches of pretend creatures and books on plants and ancient languages.

Sex with him feels like something the government should’ve been banned.

The only rub is that he seems to have no friends, no family. It takes her three months to work out that’s not the case.

She meets Tina first.

Tina Scamander has grey in her hair now. She still has the same twitch of a smile and folds her hands just so. Credence hugs her tightly when she shows up on his doorstep out of the blue. Rose hangs awkwardly in the background.

“Sorry, this is my aunt.”

“Tina Scamander,” Tina introduces herself.

“Rose Salinger,” Rose says. “I’ll just be off then and-”

“No need, dear. I want to hear all about you and about Credence. How’s London? Surprised you haven’t gone near the old school.” Tina comes in, dumping her purse on the kitchen table, puttering around. Credence’s flat is small. One main room, which is the kitchen. There’s a bed and a tiny bathroom. She eyes the bookcase. Tina’s the detective, always will be.

“I didn’t want to run into Albus. He and I had words about the propriety of letting the department have a look. How’s the kids?”

“Pretty good. Newt’s freaking out. Gods know why. It’s not like he’s a-” She pauses for barely a second- “zoologist and used to critters crawling under foot or anything.”

Rose takes a step back, a little bit off foot, but recovers quick enough.

“Come on. Sit down,” Rose says. “Do you drink coffee or tea?”

“Uh, tea would be lovely. Thank you.” She goes to put the kettle on.

Tina is perfectly nice and polite, good enough at not letting on that she knows magic. And Rose doesn’t have a casual way of slipping it into conversation that she knows, not when Credence is standing like he’s ready to take a beating.

_________________  
He’d fought when the battle finally came.

He’s caught up in it because they all are in one way or another. Credence fights the war in England. He’s the one who kills Grindelwald in the end, but that doesn’t particularly matter.

Percy will say differently, guiding him back to Percy’s flat with Newt following along like he’s tied to Percy with a physical string. He’ll be put in a bed, and given tea, because that’s what Newt does when he can’t think of anything else. Credence is quietly grateful in that moment that Newt doesn’t attempt to wrap him up in fifty different layers, after a sharp look from Percy.

Percy will try to talk to him about it.

“He wore your face and tried to kill my sister. My family.” And that’s all there is to it. People like that, people who go after kids, go after fucking innocents, deserve to be put in the ground. Percy nods. He’s an auror. He believes in justice.

But Credence is still a kid, really. He’s 22 years old.

He gets offers from the Ministry, from Congress, from any and everybody for a job. He signs on for a position brewing potions in New York. He expects a simple life. He never accounted for Rose.  
________________  
“So, your aunt,” Rose starts. They’re laying in bed. Credence is stroking her hand. They’re laying there, staring up at the ceiling.

“Hmm?” he asks.

“She’s a witch, isn’t she?” Credence sits bolt upright. Rose looks up at him with a decidedly innocent expression. She loses it at a look from him, and starts laughing. She sits up as well. “My husband. He was a wizard, told me after we got married. We kept it secret. The magical world wouldn’t like it, apparently.”

“They still don’t.”

“Your-Tina didn’t seem to mind.”

“She’s different.” Credence shrugs. “Technically they, the wizarding world at large, doesn’t like me either.” He catches Rose’s eyes. “I like you.”

“I like you too. But you were never going to tell me, were you?”

“I might’ve,” he whines. She chuckles. "I moved away from that world, haven’t really been apart of it. Once in a while, one of my friends stop by, stir things up for a day or two, but I’m not-I’m not a wizard.”

“Okay,” she says simply.

“I uh, I do brew potions to make an income. But I send them in. I don’t- there was a war, and I can’t talk about it.”

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Yeah.”

_______  
\- - -  
Rose meets the bunch of them at the wedding. It’s not . . . it’s not a traditional wedding. Percy and Newt and Tina. It wouldn’t be their wedding if it was. It had been put off, and off, and off for the war, and then Newt running away because he fell once before and didn’t know how to again.

Newt proposed, fiddling with a yard of rope, rubbing it against his fingers. “I want to be tied to you both for the rest of my life,” he says, blinking back tears, down on one knee. They say yes of course.

Credence takes Rose with him. He gets cheerfully tipsy in a corner with Rose. Despite all thoughts to the contrary, Credence is bright and happy, drunk or sober, but he doesn’t trust this crowd more than to have a drink or two.

Albus tracks him down eventually, despite his best attempts to avoid him by dancing with Rose. Rose is beautiful. She’s wearing this blue gown and laughing at him as he attempts a two-step with her. Despite Percy’s best attempts, Credence has never taken to dancing, but he’s enthusiastic about it, which in Credence’s opinion, more than makes up for anything.

Rose would agree with him if it didn’t give him fuel.

“Ah, Credence, my boy! Good to see you again!” Albus exclaims. He’s smiling, twinkling away. Credence’s smile falls off his face. He touches Rose carefully, guiding her so she’s a little bit behind him.

A war hero, that’s what they call the two wizards.

“Albus,” Credence says. God knows why Albus is here. Tina hates him. She utterly loathes the man who would throw her husbands at Grindelwald, like they are gods. Newt, not fully realizing the depth of his wife’s disgust, had probably talked her into it. Tina only folds like a wet blanket for Newt and Percy.

But she’s American, as the two men would say with a cheerful laugh. She values freedom more than they do, or at least, she doesn’t have the same rose-colored glasses for Albus Dumbledore.

Credence doesn’t think he’s ever worn rose colored glasses, and wouldn’t say anything on the matter when Newt and Percy pressed him about Albus.

“I wanted to have a word with you about a Ministry position. It’d be high paying in-”

“No.”

“You haven’t even-”

“I don’t want to be your paid experiment. I am perfectly content with my current occupation, if you would suspend your belief long enough to listen to me.”

“But if you’d-”

Rose winds up and breaks Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore’s nose for the third time in its life. “No means no,” she snarls.

And that’s how Albus Dumbledore got escorted out of the wedding by Theseus. Theseus might have a few word about how the wizarding world has treated his brother. Count on that.

Newt charms Rose’s hand. He’s the best at mending spells. He keeps peering at Credence. Credence is still chuckling over the whole thing, more to sooth the worried guests. He keeps a careful grip on Rose’s good hand. She keeps rubbing her thumb over his, even as she asks magic questions to Newt.

Percy claps Rose on the shoulder and pronounces her to be “One of the Greats!” but his eyes rest on Credence. All of them, this woven family, know what it means to have somebody stand up for them.

Rose isn’t sorry for punching that man. She’s wise enough to have asked Percy about Dumbledore months ago. She made sure it was all right with Credence first, because while there were things that needed to be said, she did not need to ask Credence to say them. But he would’ve. He would’ve sat down and tried to explain how it feels to be dust, and that Dumbledore would ask that of him, for the greater good.

He would’ve cut out parts of himself and stuck it under the microscope for her pleasure. He wouldn’t have thought twice about it even.

She will not ask that of him.

He doesn’t ask about the dead husband. She doesn’t ask about the dead man.

So, after the wedding party has come to a close, she bundles him up, wraps him up in a hug, and gives him over to his uncle Jacob. Because life is not kind. She will not add to it by begrudging him that he needs somebody that is not her.

And maybe they were all supposed to be sad or grateful or over the moon when the war with Grindelwald ended, but well, that’s not them.

Credence knows Nagini is somewhere out in the world. He knows that Rose sleeps on the left, that Jacob likes raisin bread but Tina hates it, that the step third down screeches like a murdered cat, and he doesn’t know how to be grief-stricken he killed a man.

But on the nights when he dreams of smoke and flame, and spells cast on Hogwarts towers, Rose rolls over him and holds him until the dawn comes.

All of them have nightmares. All of them go on living, the brightness of their lives only strengthed by the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't like JK Rowling


End file.
